Wednesday, March 13, 2019

That ball drops and maybe the cold and drizzly morning in December is unchallenged, and the last rep goes undone, and then in the middle of March when everybody else has had enough swings he doesn’t ask for five more pitches. And then five more. And doesn’t hit that last one to the horizon.

That ball drops and when he wakes up from surgery maybe he doesn’t shout “Goggins!” into the phone, Goggins being David, the Navy SEAL who writes about “taking souls” and being “willing to suffer,” the guy on the other end of the phone being the bemused Houston Astros trainer.